which was first populated. This country was discovered in 1770, by
some Virginia sportsmen, when the favourable accounts they gave of it
induced others to go there. No fixed establishment, however, was
formed there before 1780. At that time this immense country was not
occupied by any Indian nation; they went there to hunt, but all with
one common assent made a war of extermination against those who wished
to settle there. Thence this country derives the name of Kentucky,
which signifies, in the language of the natives, _the Land of Blood_.
When the whites made their appearance there, the natives showed still
more opposition to their establishment; they carried for a long {159}
time death and desolation, and dispatched, after their usual mode,
their prisoners in the most cruel torments. This state of things
lasted till 1783, at which time the American population having become
too strong for them to penetrate to the centre of the establishment,
they were reduced to the necessity of attacking the emigrants on their
route; and, on the other hand, they were deserted by the English in
Canada, who had abetted and supported them in the war.
In 1782 they began to open roads for carriages in the interior of the
country; prior to this there were only paths practicable for persons
on foot and horseback. Till 1788 those who emigrated from the eastern
states travelled by way of Virginia. In the first place, they went to
Block House, situated in Holston, westward of the mountains; and as
the government of the United States did not furnish them with an
escort, they waited at this place till they were sufficiently numerous
to pass in safety through the Wilderness, an uninhabited space of a
hundred and thirty miles, which they had to travel over before they
arrived at Crab Orchard, the first post occupied by the whites.[48]
The enthusiasm for emigrating to Kentucky was at that time carried to
{160} such a degree in the United States, that some years upwards of
twenty thousand have been known to pass, and many of them had even
deserted their estates, not having been able to dispose of them quick
enough. This overflow of new colonists very soon raised the price of
land in Kentucky, from two-pence and two-pence halfpenny per acre, it
suddenly rose to seven or eight shillings. The stock-jobbers profited
by this infatuation, and, not content with a moderate share of gain,
practised the most illegal measures to dispose of the land to great
advantage. They went so far as to fabricate false plans, in which
they traced rivers favourable for mills and other uses; in this manner
many ideal lots, from five hundred to a hundred thousand acres, were
sold in Europe, and even in several great towns of the United States.
Till the year 1792, Kentucky formed a part of Virginia; but the
distance from Richmond, the seat of government belonging to this
state, being seven hundred miles from Lexinton, occasions the most
serious inconveniences to the inhabitants, and their number rising
considerably above that required to form an independent state, they
were admitted into the union in the month of March following. The
{161} state of Virginia, on giving up its pretensions to that country,
consented to it only on certain conditions; it imposed on the
convention at Kentucky an obligation to follow, in part, its code of
laws, and particularly to keep up the slave-trade.
Prior to the year 1782, the number of inhabitants at Kentucky did not
exceed three thousand; it was about a hundred thousand in 1790, and in
the general verification made in 1800, it amounted to two hundred
thousand. When I was at Lexinton in the month of August 1802, its
population was estimated at two hundred thousand, including twenty
thousand negro slaves. Thus, in this state, where there were not ten
individuals at the age of twenty-five who were born there, the number
of the inhabitants is now as considerable as in seven of the old
states; and there are only four where the population is twice as
numerous. This increase, already so rapid, would have been much more
so had it not been for a particular circumstance that prevents
emigrants from going there; I mean the difficulty of proving the right
of property. Of all the states in the union it is that wherein the
rights of an individual are most subject to contest. I did not stop at
the house of one inhabitant who was persuaded of {162} the validity of
his own right but what seemed dubious of his neighbour’s.
Among the numerous causes which have produced this incredible
confusion with respect to property, one of the principal may be
attributed to the ignorance of the surveyors, or rather to the
difficulty they experienced, in the early stage of things, in
following their professions. The continual state of war in which this
country was at that time obliged them frequently to suspend their
business, in order to avoid being shot by the natives, who were
watching for them in the woods. The danger they ran was extreme, as it
is well known a native will go upwards of a hundred miles to kill a
single enemy; he stays for several days in the hollow of a tree to
take him by surprise, and when he has killed him, he scalps him, and
returns with the same rapidity. From this state of things, the result
was that the same lot has not only been measured several times by
different surveyors, but more frequently it has been crossed by
different lines, which distinguish particular parts of that lot from
the lots adjacent, which, in return, are in the same situation with
regard to those that are contiguous to them; in short, there are lots
of a thousand acres where a hundred {163} of them are not reclaimed.
Military rights are still looked upon as the most assured. One very
remarkable thing is, that many of the inhabitants find a guarantee for
their estates that are thus confused; as the law, being always on the
side of agriculture, enacts that all improvements shall be reimbursed
by the person who comes forward to declare himself the first
possessor; and as the estimation, on account of the high price of
labour, is always made in favour of the cultivators, it follows that
many people dare not claim their rights through fear of considerable
indemnifications being awarded against them, and of being in turn
expelled by others, who might attack them at the moment when they
least expected it. This incertitude in the right of property is an
inexhaustible source of tedious and expensive law-suits, which serve
to enrich the professional gentlemen of the country.
{164} CHAP. XVIII
_Distinction of Estates.--Species of Trees peculiar to each of
them.--Ginseng.--Animals in Kentucky._
In Kentucky, as well as in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Carolina, the
estates are divided into three classes, for the better assessment of
the taxes. This division with respect to the fertility of the land is
relative to each of these states; thus in Kentucky, for example, they
would put in the second class estates, which, east of the mountains,
would be ranked in the first, and in the third, those which in Georgia
and Low Carolina would be the second. I do not mean, however, to say
by this that there are not some possessions in the eastern states as
fertile as in the western; but they are seldom found except along the
rivers and in the vallies, and do not embrace so considerable a tract
of country as in {165} Kentucky, and that part of Tennessea situate
west of the Cumberland Mountains.
In these two states they appreciate the fertility of the land by the
different species of trees that grow there; thus when they announce
the sale of an estate, they take care to specify the particular
species of trees peculiar to its various parts, which is a sufficient
index for the purchaser. This rule, however, suffers an exception to
the Barrens, the soil of which, as I have remarked, is fertile enough,
and where there are notwithstanding here and there Scroby oaks, or
_quercus nigra_, shell-barked hickeries, or _juglans hickery_, which
in forests characterise the worst of soil. In support of this mode of
appreciating in America the fecundity of the soil by the nature of the
trees it produces, I shall impart a remarkable observation that I made
on my entering this state. In Kentucky and Cumberland,[49]
independent of a few trees natives of this part of these countries,
the mass of the forests, in estates of the first class, is composed of
the same species which {166} are found, but very rarely, east of the
mountains, in the most fertile soil; these species are the following,
_cerasus Virginia_, or cherry-tree; _juglans oblonga_, or white
walnut; _pavia lutea_, buck-eye; _fraxinus alba_, _nigra_, _cerulea_,
or white, black, and blue ash; _celtis foliis villosis_, or ack berry;
_ulmus viscosa_, or slippery elm; _quercus imbricaria_, or black-jack
oak; _guilandina disica_, or coffee tree; _gleditsia triacanthos_, or
honey locust; and the _annona triloba_, or papaw, which grows thirty
feet in height. These three latter species denote the richest lands.
In the cool and mountainous parts, and along the rivers where the
banks are not very steep, we observed again the _quercus macrocarpa_,
or over-cup white oak, the acorns of which are as large as a hen’s
egg; the _acer sacharinum_, or sugar-maple; the _fagus sylvatica_, or
beech; together with the _planus occidentalis_, or plane: the
_liriodendrum tulipifera_, or white and yellow poplar; and the
_magnolia acuminata_, or cucumber-tree, all three of which measure
from eighteen to twenty feet in circumference; the plane, as I have
before observed, attains a greater diameter. The two species of
poplar, i.e. the white and yellow wood, have not the least external
character, neither in their leaves nor flowers, by which they may be
{167} distinguished from each other; and as the species of the yellow
wood is of a much greater use, before they fell a tree they satisfy
themselves by a notch that it is of that species.
In estates of the second class are the _fagus castanea_, or chestnut
tree; _quercus rubra_, or red oak; _quercus tinctoria_, or black oak;
_laurus sassafras_, or sassafras; _diospiros virginia_, or persimon;
_liquidambar styraciflua_, or sweet gum; _nyssa villosa_, or gum tree,
a tree which, in direct opposition to its name, affords neither gum
nor resin. Those of the third class, which commonly are dry and
mountainous, produce very little except black and red oaks, chestnut
oaks of the mountains, _quercus prinus montana_, or rocky oak pines,
and a few Virginia cedars.
The _juglans pacane_ is found beyond the _embouchure_ of the rivers
Cumberland and Tennessea, whence they sometimes bring it to the
markets at Lexinton. This tree does not grow east of the Alleghany
Mountains. The _lobelia cardinalis_ grows abundantly in all the cool
and marshy places, as well as the _lobelia sphilitica_. The latter is
more common in Kentucky than in the other parts of the United States
that I travelled over. The _laurus {168} bensoin_, or spice wood, is
also very numerous there. The two kinds of _vaccinium_ and
_andromeda_, which form a series of more than thirty species, all very
abundant in the eastern states, seem in some measure excluded from
those of the western and the chalky region, where we found none but
the _andromeda arborea_.
In all the fertile parts covered by the forests the soil is completely
barren; no kind of herbage is seen except a few plants, scattered here
and there; and the trees are always far enough apart that a stag may
be seen a hundred or a hundred and fifty fathoms off. Prior to the
Europeans settling, the whole of this space, now bare, was covered
with a species of the great articulated reed, called _arundinaria
macrosperma_, or cane, which is in the woods from three to four inches
diameter, and grows seven or eight feet high; but in the swamps and
marshes that border the Mississippi it is upward of twenty feet.
Although it often freezes in Kentucky, from five to six degrees, for
several days together, its foliage keeps always green, and does not
appear to suffer by the cold.
Although the ginseng is not a plant peculiar to Kentucky, it is still
very numerous there. This induces {169} me to speak of it here. The
ginseng is found in America from Lower Canada as far as the state of
Georgia, which comprises an extent of more than fifteen hundred miles.
It grows chiefly in the mountainous regions of the Alleghanies, and is
by far more abundant as the chain of these mountains incline south
west. It is also found in the environs of New York and Philadelphia,
as well as in that part of the northern states situated between the
mountains and the sea. It grows upon the declivity of the hills, in
the cool and shady places, where the soil is richest. A man cannot
pull up above eight or nine pounds of fresh roots per day. These roots
are always less than an inch diameter, even after fifteen years’
growth, if by any means we can judge of it with certitude by the
number of impressions that are to be seen round the upper part of the
neck of the root, produced by the stalks that succeed each other
annually. The shape of these roots is generally elliptical; and
whenever it is biforked, which is very rare, one of the divisions is
always thicker and longer than the other. The seeds of the ginseng are
of a brilliant red, and fastened to each other. Every foot seldom
yields more than two or three. They are very similar in shape and size
to the wild {170} honey suckle. When they are disencumbered of the
substance that envelopes them they are flat and semicircular. Their
taste is more spicy, and not so bitter as the root. A month or two
after they are gathered they grow oily; and it is probable to the
rancidity which in course of time the seed attains we must attribute
the difficulty there is in rearing them when they are kept too long.
They are full ripe from the 15th of September to the 1st of October. I
gathered about half an ounce of them, which was a great deal,
considering the difficulty there is in procuring them.
It was a French missionary who first discovered the ginseng in Canada.
When it was verified that this plant was the same as that which grows
in Tartary, the root of which has such valuable qualities in the eyes
of the Chinese, it became an article of trade with China. For some
time after its discovery the root was sold for its weight in gold; but
this lucrative trade was but of short duration. The ginseng exported
from America was so badly prepared, that it fell very low in price,
and the trade almost entirely ceased. However, for some time past it
has been rather better. Though the Americans have been so long
deprived of this beneficial trade, it can {171} only be attributed to
the want of precaution that they used either in the gathering or
preparation of the ginseng. In Chinese Tartary this gathering belongs
exclusively to the emperor; it is done only by his orders, and they
proceed in it with the greatest care. It commences in autumn, and
continues all the winter, the epoch when the root has acquired its
full degree of maturity and perfection; and by the means of a very
simple process they render it almost transparent.
In the United States, on the contrary, they begin gathering of ginseng
in the spring, and end at the decline of autumn. Its root, then soft
and watery, wrinkles in drying, terminates in being extremely hard,
and loses thus a third of its bulk, and nearly half its weight. These
causes have contributed in lowering its value. It is only gathered in
America by the inhabitants whose usual occupations afford them
leisure, and by the sportsmen, who, with their carabine, provide
themselves, for this purpose, with a bag and a pickaxe. The merchants
settled in the interior of the country purchase dried ginseng at the
rate of ten pence per pound, and sell it again from eighteen pence to
two shillings, at the seaports. I have never heard particularly what
quantity {172} of it was exported annually to China, but I think it
must exceed twenty-five to thirty thousand pounds weight. Within these
four or five years this trade has been very brisk. Several persons
begin even to employ the means made use of by the Chinese to make the
root transparent. This process, long since described in several works,
is still a secret which is sold for four hundred dollars in Kentucky.
The ginseng thus prepared is purchased at six or seven dollars per
pound, by the merchants at Philadelphia, and is, they say, sold again
at Canton for fifty or a hundred, according to the quality of the
roots. Again, the profits must be very considerable, since there are
people who export it themselves from Kentucky to China.
They have again, in Kentucky, and the western country, the same
animals that inhabit those parts east of the mountains, and even
Canada: but a short time after the settling of the Europeans several
species of them wholly disappeared, particularly the elks and bisons.
The latter, notwithstanding, were more common there than in any other
part of North America. The non-occupation of the country, the quantity
of rushes and wild peas, which supplied them abundantly with food the
whole year round; and {173} the licks (places impregnated with salt,
as I have before mentioned) are the causes that kept them there. Their
number was at that time so considerable, that they were met in flocks
of a hundred and fifty to two hundred. They were so far from being
ferocious, that they did not fear the approach of the huntsmen, who
sometimes shot them solely for the sake of having their tongue, which
they looked upon as a delicious morsel. At four years old they weigh
from twelve to fourteen hundred weight; and their flesh, it is said,
is preferable to that of the ox. At present there are scarcely any
from Ohio to the river Illinois. They have nearly deserted these
parts, and strayed to the right bank of the Mississippi.
The only species of animals that are still common in the country are
the following, viz. the deer, bear, wolf, red and grey fox, wild cat,
racoon, opossum, and three or four kinds of squirrels.
The animals to which the Americans give the name of wild cat is the
Canadian lynx, or simply a different species; and it is through
mistake that several authors have advanced that the true wild cat, as
they look upon to be the original of the domestic species, either
existed in the United States, or more northerly.
The racoon, or _ursus lotor_, is about the size of a {174} fox, but
not so tall and more robust. Taken young, it very soon grows tame, and
stays in the house, where it catches mice similar to a cat. The name
of _lotor_ is very appropriate, as the animal retires in preference in
the hollow trees that grow by the side of creeks or small rivers that
run through the swamp; and in these sorts of marshes it is most
generally found. It is most common in the southern and western states,
as well as in the remote parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia. It is
very destructive in the corn fields. The usual method of catching this
animal is with dogs, in the dead of the night, as it is very rarely to
be seen in the day time. Its skin is very much esteemed, throughout
the United States, by the hat manufacturers, who purchase them at the
rate of two shillings each.
Nearer toward the houses the inhabitants are infested with squirrels,
which do also considerable damage to the corn. This species _sciurus
corolinianus_, is of a greyish colour, and rather larger than those in
Europe. The number of them is so immense, that several times a day the
children are sent round the fields to frighten them away. At the least
noise they run out by dozens, and take shelter upon the trees, whence
they come down the very moment after. {175} As well as the bears in
North America, they are subject to emigrations. Toward the approach of
winter they appear in so great a number, that the inhabitants are
obliged to meet together in order to destroy them. An excursion for
this purpose, every now and then, is looked upon as pleasure. They go
generally two by two, and kill sometimes thirty or forty in a morning.
A single man, on the contrary, could scarcely kill one, as the
squirrel, springing upon the branch of a tree, keeps turning round
successively to put himself in opposition to the gunner. I was at one
of these sporting parties, where, for dinner, which is generally taken
in some part of the wood appointed for the rendezvous, they had above
sixty of them roasted. Their flesh is white and exceedingly tender,
and this method of dressing them is preferable to any other.
Wild turkies, which begin to grow very scarce in the southern states,
are still extremely numerous in the west. In the parts least inhabited
they are so very tame, that they may be shot with a pistol. In the
east, on the contrary, and more particularly in the environs of the
seaports, it is very difficult to approach them. They are not alarmed
at a noise, {176} but they have a very piercing sight, and as soon as
they perceive the gunner they fly with such swiftness that it is
impossible for a dog to overtake them for several minutes; and when
they see themselves on the point of being taken, they escape by
resuming their flight. Wild turkies usually frequent the swamps and
the sides of creeks and rivers, whence they only go out morning and
evening. They perch upon the tops of the loftiest trees, where,
notwithstanding their size, it is not always easy to perceive them.
When they are not frightened, they return upon the same trees for
several weeks together.
For the space of eight hundred leagues east of Mississippi there is
only this one species of the wild turkey. They are much larger than
those that we have in our farm-yards. In autumn and winter they
chiefly feed on chesnuts and acorns. At that time some are shot that
weigh from thirty to forty pounds. The variety of domestic turkies
proceeds originally from this species of wild turkies; and when it has
not been crossed with the common species, it preserves the primitive
colour of its plumage, and that of the feet, which are of a deep red.
Though ever since the year 1525 our domestic turkies were naturalized
{177} in Spain, whence they were introduced into Europe, it is
probable that they are natives of some of the more southern parts of
America, where there may be, I have no doubt, a different species from
that found in the United States.
{178} CHAP. XIX
_Different kinds of culture in Kentucky.--Exportation of colonial
produce.--Peach trees.--Taxes_
In the state of Kentucky, like those of the southern parts, nearly the
whole of the inhabitants, isolated in the woods, cultivate their
estates themselves, and particularly in harvest time they assist each
other; while some, more independent, have their land cultivated by
negro slaves.
They cultivate, in this state, tobacco, hemp, and different sorts of
grain from Europe, principally wheat and Indian corn. The frosts,
which begin very early, are unfavourable to the culture of cotton,
which might be a profitable part of their commerce, provided the
inhabitants had any hopes of success. It is by the culture of Indian
corn that all those who form establishments commence; since for the
few {179} years after the ground is cleared the soil is so fertile in
estates of the first class, that the corn drops before it ears. Their
process in husbandry is thus: after having opened, with the plough,
furrows about three feet from each other, they cut them transversely
by others at an equal distance, and set seven or eight grains in the
points of intersection. When they have all come up, only two or three
plants are left in the ground; a necessary precaution, in order to
give free scope for the vegetation, and to insure a more abundant
harvest. Toward the middle of the summer the leaves from the bottom of
the stalk begin to wither, and successively those from the top. In
proportion as they dry up they are carried away carefully, and
reserved as a winter sustenance for horses, which prefer that kind of
forage to the best hay.
In estates of the first class, that yield annually, Indian corn grows
from ten to twelve feet high, and produces, in a common year, forty to
fifty English bushels per acre, and sixty to seventy-five in abundant
years. Some have been known, the second and third year after the land
has been cleared, to yield a hundred. The bushel, weighing about fifty
to fifty-five pounds, never sells for more than a {180} quarter of a
dollar, and sometimes does not bring half the money.
The species of corn that they cultivate is long and flat in point of
shape, and generally of a deep yellow. The time of harvest is toward
the end of September. A single individual may cultivate eight or ten
acres of it. The culture of corn is one of the most important of the
country; much more, however, with regard to exportation than as an
object of consumption. The county of Fayette, of which Lexinton is the
chief town, and the surrounding counties, are those that supply the
most. Good estates produce from twenty-five to thirty bushels per
acre, weighing about sixty pounds, although they never manure the
ground, nor till it more than once.